Chicken Killer
by Acepilot6
Summary: No.44 in the Road series. Reposted due to glitch making it unreadable. James Pickles is trying ask Sophie to a party. But it's not as easy as it sounds - especially when Tommy and Phil try to help. Please read and review.


**Chicken Killer**  
Acepilot

AN - No.44 in the Road series, this is a return to the stories about James Pickles. This one, however, is told from the point of view of his father. It's set a few days before the fic **This Has Disaster Written All Over It** (no.30 in the series). The title, by the way, is part of a theme: to help identify them, all the new stories about James and Sophie are named after songs by The Triffids. _Chicken Killer_ can be found on the definitive _Born Sandy Devotional_.

_This story is part of the 45-minute challenge. Though this did take an hour. Oh well._

Disclaimer - the characters contained within are property of KlaskyCsupo, except The Next Generation Road characters, who are my creations.

- - - -

"Hey."

I look up at the sound of the voice, and see Phil DeVille standing in my office doorway, a broad grin on his face of the kind that suggests he's found new trouble to cause. He evidently wants me to ask what's up, but I decide not to play along. At least for the moment. "Hey Phil, I didn't hear you come in."

He rolls his eyes. "Well you wouldn't with those cans on," he says, indicating my headphones. "Editing again?"

"Yeah, new short I've been working on," I tell him. "So, what brings you to my humble abode?"

His grin only broadens. "Well, I figured you wouldn't want to miss the show."

Show? "What show?" I ask, a little suspicious but mostly anticipatory: ideas Phil finds amusing generally are.

He beckons me over with a wave of his hand and points toward the kitchen. "Your son is going to ask his lady-love to the party."

I have to grin at that. Though James will only admit to being 'intrigued' by Sophie, not to actually having romantic feelings for her, he's really fooling no-one but himself. No-one pursues someone _that_ vehemently just to be friends. "You're right, I wouldn't miss this for the world."

I trail Phil into the kitchen, where James is sitting with a piece of paper in front of him, and the phone next to it on the table. The paper is filled with the scribble that he produces when hurried or nervous, or both. He seems to be reading it intently and editing copiously, even as I cross to the fridge to get a cola he crosses out several lines.

"Hey James," Phil says, pulling up a chair at the table. "Watchya doin'?"

He throws Phil a quick glare. "You know perfectly well what I'm doing. Which does beg the question, 'why are you in the room?'"

"Because you'll need our help," Phil informs James succintly. "Let's face it, you've never had much luck asking girls out before -"

"I'm not asking her out!" James exclaims. "Just to see if she wants to come to the party, which, I might point out, _you_ will also be attending."

Phil continues as if James had not spoken. "- and this is Sophie, which adds a whole new level of challenge to proceedings. Do you seriously think you're gonna just be able to waltz through this, cool as you please?"

"Other uncles have faith in their nephews." James turns to look at me, a grin on his face. "Right, dad?"

I gulp.

"Not you too!" he exclaims, spinning around in his seat to throw me a betrayed glare. "You think I can't do this?"

"Well...not really. I mean, I love you like a son - "

"Dad, you need better jokes, seriously."

"- but Sophie intimidates the hell out of you. I'll believe you can handle her when I see it."

James huffs indignantly and throws up his hands. "Betrayed by my own flesh and blood! I can't believe it!"

"Think he gets that tendency to the dramatic from you?" Phil stage whispers. I hit him on the back of the head as I slump down into another chair.

James picks up the phone in one hand and his finely-edited piece of paper in the other and starts dialling.

He gets as far as the second-last number before slamming the phone down, the blood draining from his face and horror in his eyes. "I can't do it!"

Phil actually laughs out loud, patting him on the back. "Glad you came to that realisation. Don't worry, we'll get you through this."

James glares at him again. "I don't need to be gotten through it. I just need to..." his eyes latch onto his piece of paper. "Think through what I'm going to say."

Bits of the paper have been corrected so heavily with a felt-tip pen that there are holes poking through to the other side. "You don't think you've thought about that enough?"

"Well..." he seems to be struggling for something here.

I sigh. I like to tell myself that it was not so long ago that I was in this position, of having to ask a girl out. Admittedly, I hadn't completely and utterly drove said-girl up the wall for months before hand, so I had a bit of an advantage. "Just...be yourself."

"But not too much," Phil amends. I throw him a look to try and suggest that he's not helping, but he seems to anticipate this and holds up his hands in some sort of self-defence. "It was being himself that largely got him into all this trouble in the first place."

I want to correct him but he does have a fair point.

James looks somewhat miffed by this statement, but does, to his eternal credit, scrunch up the piece of paper and throw it to the side. "Alright, so what _do_ I say to her?"

I shrug. "Say, 'hey, we're friends now, right? Want to come to a party?'"

He raises an eyebrow. "You don't think that sounds too much like I'm asking her out? Because I'm not."

Phil sighs in a very defeated manner. The stories that Phil has told me about James and Sophie's interactions in English class could fill a small hardback and evidently Phil has already gotten to the good bit of the story a few steps ahead of James and Sophie themselves. I think he feels partly that he deserves to see them together after having endured the brunt of what he refers to as "their flirting" throughout the last few years.

"Not at all," I reassure him.

He picks up the phone again and starts typing in numbers. He gets through all of them this time, but then slams down the phone again, evidently before it connects. "What if her parents pick up?"

I exchange a glance with Phil, who for once just shrugs. "What if?"

"I don't want to ask to speak to her! They'll want to know who it is, and they don't like me." The rest of the colour drains from his face as something apparently much worse occurs to him. "What if it's her _brother_?!"

I know little about her brother, so I look to Phil for clarification, but he just has a look of someone who had sucked on a lemon, which I interpret as a vague agreement with James' point.

"Isn't it her cell phone?"

"Yeah, but I wouldn't put it past her parents to do it anyway. I don't think they've got any real respect for their childrens' privacy."

"And you would know this _how_?" I ask.

He shurgs. "A guess. And because it's one way in which this could go wrong. So it probably will."

Paranoia strikes again. "It'll be her if it's anyone. Just _phone her_."

He looks to Phil for support, but he just shakes his head. "I'm with your dad on this one. You didn't go to all this trouble to get her to talk to you just to never call, did you?"

James seems to concede the point. "Alright, alright." He picks up the phone again, and starts dialling.

This time he gets through all the numbers, and sits there for a moment while evidently listening to it ring, before jerking so violently that he practically drops the phone. He fumbles it but recovers and slams it back down onto the cradle.

"_What_!?" I all-but-wail. I really want to have faith and confidence in my son but this isn't helping at all. "What is is this time!?"

"I got her message bank," he says, breathing deeply.

Phil looks at him and puts on his best 'do-you-understand' face. "Okay. You see, at this point, in polite society, we do this thing called _leaving a message_."

James wails and throws his head down on the table. I reach over and give him a pat on the back. "All I could think was, 'what if she never calls back!' I'd be terrorised by thinking about it - did she hear the message and not want to come? Did she never hear the message? Did her _brother_ hear the message?"

Phil nods. "Valid points, all," he says, in a complete deadpan. "You clearly know that this is -"

The phone rings. James leaps out of his skin and Phil is so startled that he knocks his own chair out from under him. I barely manage to stay in my seat.

"Is it her?!" I ask, recoiling from the phone as if it was a snake preparing to strike.

"It could be! She must have seen the missed call," Phil agrees.

"I can't do it!" James says. "She's going to say no, she hates me anyway, she's going to say -"

"You can do it and you're going to," I tell him, reaching over and pushing the button on the phone base to activate the speakerphone. The ringing stops with a click and all three of us fall deathly silent.

The line is connected but no-one is speaking: you could hear a pin drop in the room. Finally, a tentative voice drifts out of the speaker. "Hello?"

James tries to speak but no sound comes out. Phil goes to say something but I lunge across the table, tackling him before he can make a sound. Of all the things this conversation needs, I don't think he's it.

Sophie is evidently growing less patient. "I got a missed call from this number. Is anyone there?"

James tries again. "Hi, Sophie," he manages this time, his face starting to flood with colour, a sharp relief to the stark white it was a moment ago.

"James?" she asks, sounding tentative.

"Yeah, it's me."

I pull back from where I'm holding Phil pinned to the floor and nod encouragingly at my son.

"Did you call me for something?" Sophie asks, sounding a little amused at his obvious difficulty speaking, a little curious, and a _little_ irritated. Presumably at his inability to string more than three words together.

"Uh - "

At first I think he's looking to me for support, but then I see that he's looking for the piece of paper he was scribbling on before. He makes a grab for it but I beat him there, scooping it up and stuffing it in my mouth. He throws me a glare and turns back to face the phone. "Well -"

I spit the paper out. It tastes _foul_. I stick my tongue out and look at myself in the glass of the oven, it's got streaks of black ink all over it. Phil sees this and chuckles quietly.

"Well, we - well, not we, some friends and stuff, actually - they're having this kind of party sort of thing for my old neighbourhood, and - I was wondering if - seeing as there'll be plenty of people there and everything and I know it's not like it was _your_ old neighbourhood but anyway I hope you'll see that I was just wondering if you'd like to come over for it next Saturday night at about five-thirty?"

More words than my son has put together since he could talk. And the appalling lack of punctuation is surely an offence to the English teacher lying prone beneath me, but he seems to be stifling chuckles more than anything.

There is a pause from Sophie's end, presumably as she tries to disentangle this. Before she can say anything, James catches his breath and goes back on the offensive.

"I mean, I just wanted to know if you'll come as a friend, because I haven't seen you since graduation and I really do want to be your friend, but it's a bit pointless all this trying if I never actually see you, now is it?"

This sentence/run-on/question culminates in an odd high-pitched laugh which I don't think James would be able to produce under normal circumstances if it was demanded of him.

But Sophie seems not to notice. "Where is it?"

James' face goes blank. He has forgotten.

"Treyarch and Waterloo Street," Phil offers from the floor.

"Treyarch and Waterloo Street," James recites, parrot-like.

I suspect Sophie heard Phil, but she doesn't say anything about it one way or another.

"Sure. I'll be there. Was that all?"

If there was anything else, I suspect it would kill him. "Yes, that's all."

"Alright, James. I'll see you then. Bye."

"Bye," he squeaks out, and the phone disengages with a click.

James slumps into his chair as if his spine has fallen out of his body. I leap off Phil and grab some paper towel which I wipe my tongue on, while Phil himself rises and tries to stretch out some kinks presumably developed by his fall.

"See," James says, throwing us a game grin. "I told you I could do it. No trouble at all."

- - -

hope you enjoyed it. Please review.


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